Mick Schumacher car on fire as ‘every fire marshal in the pit lane’ rushes to the scene

Mick Schumacher suffered a worrying problem during the early stages of FP3 at the Spanish Grand Prix when his brakes caught fire after only a few minutes of the session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The German driver was forced to limp back to the pit lane as smoke billowed from one of his rear tyres before he was met by a gaggle of fire marshals outside the Haas garage.

Schumacher appeared to struggle to bring his car to a halt as a result of the decrease in stopping power caused by the fire before he was attended to by a number of marshals brandishing fire extinguishers. Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz went on to suggest that Schumacher could even be forced to sit out of this afternoon’s qualifying session due to the fire having caused plenty of additional damage to the surrounding area of his rear right tyre as well as the affected brakes.

“It’s now caught fire to the whole of the right rear corner,” explained Kravitz. “Every fire marshal in the pit lane has now rushed down to Haas and the more responsible of us are just keeping our distance here.

“There’s all sorts of things. You could only see the flames from the rear. That’s why the front jackman was there, as the car came in you couldn’t see the ball of flames from the front.

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“That car is definitely out for the rest of the session. The damage seems to have caught on from the initial brake fire and now it’s just covered in extinguisher. That’s got to be a doubt for qualifying.

“It’s been on fire for a good minute and now it’s absolutely wrecked. There’s going to be damage in all sorts of areas.”

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The fire was eventually put out by the marshals in attendance but it remains to be seen whether the Haas mechanics will be able to restore Schumacher’s car to a working condition before the start of this afternoon’s qualifying session in Barcelona. The 23-year-old has managed to reach Q2 at every Grand Prix of the new season to date but could be forced to start tomorrow’s race from the back of the grid if the issue cannot be resolved over the next few hours.

Schumacher is yet to score a single point in 2022 despite coming agonisingly close to securing a top-10 finish at the end of this year’s curtain-raiser in Bahrain. He will be desperate to get on the board in the not-too-distant future in order to begin catching up to his Haas team-mate Kevin Magnussen, who currently occupies 10th place in the Drivers’ Championship standings with a tally of 15 points.

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